Recognizing regions: ASEAN's struggle for recognition

Abstract

Does recognition matter for a region as much as it does for a state and a person? This article examines the power of recognition in shaping regional cooperation. Rather than focusing on the behaviours and interactions between member states, which most studies have done, this article introduces a recognition model to investigate how the social practices of a region with non-member entities promote regional cooperation. By viewing recognition as a tradable commodity and an independent variable, the framework illustrates how the contest for recognition permeates beyond interpersonal and interstate interactions to include the struggle for recognition by regions. The model hypothesizes that the extent of recognition accorded to a region has an influence on its development. Drawing on newly released US declassified diplomatic records, this article tests the soundness of the proposed recognition model for regions by analysing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) struggle for recognition in the 1970s. It discusses how recognition was traded between ASEAN and three foreign powers, namely the USA, Japan and the European Economic Community, during the grouping's formative years. The findings suggest that the strengthening of a regional concept is influenced by the willingness of, and the extent to which, foreign powers recognize the entity. The central theme of this article is that recognition plays an important function in the development of a regional concept.     

Federalism and nuclear waste disposal: The struggle over shared decision making

Traditionally the domain of federal agencies, authority to select sites for the disposal of commercial high-level nuclear wastes has recently been expanded to include a role for host states. State opposition to earlier siting efforts had demonstrated the dificulties federal agencies faced in resolving conflict between the local population bearing the costs and the dispersed population receiving the benefits. The new model defines the agency and the state as adversarial representatives of these competing interests. An outstanding weakness, however, is that it does not clearly specify who should speak for the state, and may actually promote intrastate conflict. The adversarial approach does not provide a generic solution to the problem of federalism, but it may prove useful at the state level for selecting disposal sites for low-level radioactive wastes and hazardous chemical wastes.     

The development of capitalism in South African agriculture: clas struggle in the countryside

The existence of contradictions within the Ricardian system is by now well established. It remains, however, to consider the necessity of those contradictions. In this essay certain of the central paradoxes of Ricardian economics are treated not in terms of the deficiencies of Ricardo's analytical ability, the lack of proper ‘tools’, or the presence of ideological blinders, but in terms of their intrinsic necessity within the Ricardian conception of the capitalist economic system as a whole. We indicate how Ricardo's own insight into the functioning of the capitalist economy drives him to adopt principles of value which he himself considers to be in conflict. In light of this discussion it is possible to approach more closely to a determination of the essential character of Ricardian economics and of classical political economy as a whole.     

Black Theology,a weapon in the struggle for freedom: a Gramscian analysis

South African churchmen created Black Theology during the late 1960s and early 1970s to add a theological dimension to the African struggle against apartheid. In doing this, they looked to western Christianity, African-American theology, and their own experience of suffering as sources of inspiration, while creating a new religious culture and political orientation to liberate their people from European domination. Hence, Black Theology is in fact an anti-ruling class ideology designed to subvert the existing sociopolitical order. This study examines that ideology treating it as a case study and using Gramscian theory as an interpretive grid. Moreover, it argues that Black Theology informs Gramsci and in so doing, identifies four specific contributions that Christianity is capable of making to a cultural revolution, which include a moral standard, a structured community, an emancipatory language, and a divinely inspired comment to the struggle.     

Transgression and (sexual) citizenship: the political struggle for self-determination within BDSM communities

There has been – and continues to be – a tension within the political strategies of sexual minority communities claiming citizenship. Whilst attempting to forge a political self-determination based on being (dissident) sexual subjects, members of sexually diverse communities have frequently engaged in political practices that normalize their diversity to accord with wider socio-cultural conventions. In this article, we address this issue in relation to the political strategies of one of the most marginalized sexual identities/practices: BDSM. By drawing on the work of Foucault, Rose, Rabinow and Bahktin, we advance a case for how it may be possible for dissident sexual communities to resist the normalizing effects of citizenship whilst still making claims for legal recognition and wider social acknowledgment. Key to the argument is the theorization of a position wherein carnival transgression operates within a dialectical integration of ideology and utopia as a mode of citizenship.